Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a key health condition. Comparative effectiveness research (CER) is underdeveloped, particularly in COPD. The development of a high impact CER research agenda requires a collaborative infrastructure between the various stakeholders in healthcare who generate, disseminate, and use new knowledge. The COPD Outcomes-based Network for Clinical Effectiveness and Research Translation (CONCERT;https://www.kpchr.org/concert/) was developed in 2007 to address this need. CONCERT is an interdisciplinary consortium of investigators at 6 US medical centers with expertise in comparative effectiveness research, biostatistics, clinical hospital medicine, pulmonary medicine, and critical care. CONCERT investigators provide care to diverse patient populations with COPD, including those in managed and non-managed care (government and non-government) settings. CONCERT's mission is to employ CER and translational research methodologies to evaluate and improve the care and outcomes of patients with COPD. Through support from an R13 large conference grant from AHRQ/NHLBI, CONCERT will convene consensus conferences to develop and prioritize CER agendas in Chronic COPD care (May 2009) and Acute COPD care (May 2010) in collaboration with a broad base of stakeholders, including physician and non-physician professional organizations (e.g., ATS, ACCP, ACP), the Centers for Medicare &Medicaid Services, private health plans, the Joint Commission, quality improvement organizations, patient advocacy groups (e.g., COPD Foundation), and sponsors (AHRQ, NHLBI). We now propose to develop a research infrastructure (CONCERT-CER) that will accelerate the development and conduct of multi- institutional, interdisciplinary studies that are responsive to the COPD CER priorities identified by these stakeholders. We believe that with this infrastructure CONCERT will be poised to become the premier US-based CER consortium for conducting ground-breaking, high-impact research that provides high-quality evidence to support healthcare decisions for patients with COPD. The Specific Aims of the proposed research program are: (1) to develop and support a novel national COPD Data Hub for CER studies in diverse COPD patient populations in managed care and non-managed care settings;(2) to collect additional detailed clinical information on a sample (N=1,200;200 in each of 6 Clinical Centers) selected from the national COPD Data Hub;and (3) to develop and refine four COPD CER protocols that address high- priority questions identified in the consensus conferences by stakeholders. The protocols will be developed by the CONCERT investigators and will include specification of the study population, intervention, control group, and outcome measures, as well as the study design. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a key health condition. Comparative effectiveness research (CER) is underdeveloped, particularly in COPD, and requires a collaborative infrastructure between the various stakeholders in healthcare. The COPD Outcomes-based Network for Clinical Effectiveness and Research Translation (CONCERT;https://www.kpchr.org/concert/) proposes to develop a research infrastructure that will accelerate the development and conduct of multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary studies that are responsive to the COPD CER priorities of stakeholders.